Anna Pelloia
This essay will explore how the fairy tales’ genre, which has always been a male-dominated genre, has been reimagined, adapted, and rewritten by women authors. The main focus will go on Angela Carter, because her transformative work in reshaping fairytales from a feminist point of view empowers women as active participants in storytelling rather than passive, submissed, or controlled subjects. Angela Carter’s work demonstrates how retelling fairy tales can challenge not just gender roles but also broader social structures and cultural norms. In addition, this paper will question the literary choices in fairytales and the consequent historical erasure of female voices in them by analyzing Carter’s “The Snow Child” and contrasting it with the classic “Snow White” fairy tale by the Grimm brothers.
Fairy tales have always been one more way to keep the male supremacy in society, not letting women express themselves and not giving them the necessaries tools to fight against a patriarchy. In the book Twice Upon a Time, Harries talks about the fact that tales are influential myths that reinforced gender stereotypes, limiting women’s potential and shaping cultural expectations: “as the second wave of feminist thinking got under way in the 1970s, many critics fixed on fairy tales as condensed expressions of social expectations for women and as dangerous myths that determined their lives and hopes.” (Harries, page 28) To reinforce her ideas, Harries also mentions that in fairy tales, “its predictable structure helps make its gender inequalities and family structures also seem inevitable.” (Harries, page 29) Which makes it evident how stories maintain the male gender’s superiority in all aspects. Elizabeth Harries clarifies this by stating that historically, women’s educational attainment affected their capacity for self-expression, as they were unable to acquire writing skills: “one of the crucial factors in study of literary history is what he calls access to literacy. And it is certainly true before the mid-seventeenth century, women in Europe produced far less writing than men did because literacy among women was at first for few aristocrats, and because later many women were taught how to read but not to write.” (p 21, Harries) In fact, initially only a few aristocratic women were literate, and later, while many women were taught to read, they were often not taught to write. Harries in her book analyzes that in order to understand literary history, we must examine how gender has shaped access to literacy and that women had been prived for a long time of the use of their voice in the writings, making it way harder these days to shape the male-directed tales into a more equal balance. “in order to understand literary history in general, however, we must continue to explore the ways gender has influenced not only access to to literacy and to the means of production but also to what we read” (p 21, Harries)
This essay will go further in the analysis of the objectification of the female gender with Angela Carter. In “Snow White,” the girl acts as a passive, idealized feminine figure, and the role of the savior is a male figure, the prince. In “Snow Child,” Carter does not simply rewrite the story of “Snow White” but instead brings out clearly the problems of sexism and depersonalization of women, even at a young age. In the Grimm’s version of “Snow White,” there are clear examples of the objectification of women: “Make me a present of it, for I can’t live without seeing Snow White […] She came to life. “Good heavens, where am I?” she cried out. The prince was overjoyed and said, “You are with me […] I love you more than anything else on earth. Come with me to my father’s castle. You shall be my bride.”” (p 101, Grimms) In this passage, it is clear how the prince is the one leading the scene, making Snow White only be a part of his story, where he is the one in power and who takes decisions. In Carter’s version “Snow Child,” the author makes of the dirty dream of a king come true, showing clearly how the mind of a man can be so sexist against the figure of a woman, of whatever age, just for his own pleasure: “As soon as he completed her description, there she stood, beside the road, white skin, red mouth, black hair, and stark naked; she was the child of his desire” (Snow Child, Carter). It’s crucial to pay attention to Carter’s language use in this last quotation since, instead of using the term “dream,” she used “desire” when writing “she was the child of his desire.” In contrast to a father’s wish for a child, this use of language conveys a sense of sexual and carnal desire. It is so important to note Carter’s attention in the language to transmit her version of the story as a critique against men, with every little detail possible. Towards the end of the tale, she writes, “Now the Countess had all her clothes on again.” (Snow Child, Carter) In this way, the author makes it hard to not imagine a sexual assault between the count and the countess, which in turn makes it impossible not to try to seek for a solution to stop the diffuse masculine aggression against women.
Angela Carter uses her stories to examine relationships of power mostly between genders but also in societal hierarchies. For instance, her focus on wealth, inheritance, and materialism critiques class structures, which are often implicit in original tales. She does this by using the familiar framework of fairy tales to explore themes like power dynamics, class, sexuality, and agency, opening pathways for other authors to deconstruct and reconstruct these stories in innovative ways. Carter’s work exemplifies how fairy tales can be used as vehicles to explore not just personal or gendered experiences but also collective societal issues. Her imaginative approach encourages new ways of seeing the stories we tell about ourselves and our cultures.
This new feminist vision of the tale, however, was not “necessary,” according to the article “From “The Snow Child” to “Snow White”: Angela Carter’s Inheritance from Classic Fairy Tales.” As the article states, the earlier versions of fairy tales such as those of the Grimms functioned similarly as a tool against patriarchy, simply in a more subtle and devious way, and are considered more effective in penetrating the minds of readers in a more unconscious manner than Carter’s more direct one. The author of the article states that “in the Grimms’ “Snow White,” a hidden clue exposes the operation of the patriarchal power mechanism over women, but in a more subtle way, revealing that patriarchal power disciplines women through brainwashing the mind and punishing the body.” Nonetheless, it is brightly clear how the Grimm’s version is a very misunderstandable version for those who read fairy tales, like most people, without much of a background analysis. Especially since fairy tales are nowadays used with children who clearly do not bother to analyze in depth every word in the fairy tale that is told to them and simply assimilate it as a moral lesson and life experience since they are still creating and learning their place in the world. Carter’s version, in fact, is a much clearer and more direct way to get across how things really are: in a male-dominated world where partiarchy has always reigned, women like Carter bring to light the problems of sexism and gender differences by shoving the facts in anyone’s face, so that it is impossible not to see them and not to reason about them and to want a change. This is the best way to talk about the problems that society presents from its birth; in fact, Emre Say in the article “A Structuralist Appreciation of Angela Carter’s “The Snow Child” Glimpsed through a Feminist Awareness” states: “As to the similarities between the Countess and the Snow Child, the chief common striking feature shared by them is their gender: Both are female. Relatedly, in congruity with accustomed gender role patterns imposed by patriarchal social codes, both the Countess and the Snow Child are delineated in a submissive position to the Count in their relationship with him, who represents oppressive patriarchal authority in the story.” (p 126, Say) As it is possible to note, in “Snow Child,” it is more simple to note the author’s attention to create a story that puts female characters in a submissive position to the main male character. Say also tells us to analyze the nudity in the story and how it evolves in the plot: “Another striking similarity that can be detected by an attentive eye and is indicative and further confirmative of patriarchal domination permeating the story consists in that they become naked and then get dressed up in the course of the plot—particularly should the Snow Child be taken into consideration as she comes into existence stark-naked, where, as the Countess’s clothes slip away from her body gradually—in a way as to serve to the pleasure of piercing-penetrating heterosexual male gaze.” (p 126, Say) The female characters in “The Snow Child” are unwittingly stripped of their clothes (and thus their dignity) to make room for the desires of the Count that do not take into account the feelings of the women in the story but only his carnal desires toward any female subject, regardless of age or family relationships with them. In this brutal but necessary way, Angela Carter is able to show us again how patriarchy, women’s submission and unbalanced social structures can be disruptive for those individuals that are the innocent victims and can’t defend themselves. Carter’s feminist retellings maintain the core characters and plots of the original tales while infusing them with progressive feminist values. Carter’s role is therefore to challenge the injustices present in our society, exposing their harsh realities exactly as they are.
In conclusion, this essay examined Angela Carter’s feminist reinterpretations of classic fairy tales, particularly “The Snow Child,” which represents a powerful critique of the patriarchal structures embedded in traditional narratives such as Grimm’s “Snow White.” Her work highlights the destructive impact of patriarchal and male perspectives in storytelling and offers a direct confrontation with the sexism often found in the original tales. By starkly presenting the harsh reality of patriarchal domination, Carter invites readers to reexamine social norms and confront feminist perspectives. Finally, her transformative approach not only deconstructs the oppressive structures of society but also aims to serve as inspiration for women’s empowerment and social equity.
